Redemption
by twinklestar148
Summary: Yoh doesn't know he's been trying to save himself all these years. He definitely doesn't know Fei Long is the reason he can. Yoh/Fei Long.


A/N I wrote this with a jacked up pinkie finger. It was oddly painful.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Finder Series. If I did, Akihito would definitely be more of a hippie child, Yoh would have more character developement, and there would be even MORE scenes of sexy men holding guns- I mean, what?

* * *

So, there's this thing- this problem and Yoh has never been very good at problems (he'd hated math) and it goes sort of like this: there's Asami, who's made from stone edges and cold jewels, Akihito, who's got the entire world in his eyes, and Fei Long, who's so gracefully lethal that all of Hong Kong shits themselves at night with terror.

Then there's Yoh, who-

* * *

Ok, so Yoh's not very good with words, not where it matters, and definitely not with emotion-words so all of this angst-bullshit really wears on him after a while. He knows how to kill, fight, take orders, and sometimes improvise (but he doesn't really like to). Eloquent prose and shit isn't really a requirement for any of those.

He knows this though: there're a fuckload of problems (he hates problems) going on right now and they all affect the Business in one way or another, even though they shouldn't.

(It's kind of Fei Long's fault. Not completely though, because, even though Asami's a master manipulator, not all of _his _plans make it.)

Really, the biggest problem is that Asami is head over heels obsessed with a kid that's way too young and hard-headed to even _think_ about the life Asami is trying to force him into. Yoh has spent weeks looking after Takaba and he knows that the boy never expected to be caught in a gang war, wanted to be shooting pictures and not guns, that he shouldn't be involved at all.

The other problem is Fei Long- because his father is dead and his brother is a fuck up and there's no one to blame for this except for Asami, who he's kind of, maybe, in love with. And the thing about Fei Long is, if there's someone to blame, he'll blame them, and he'll make them pay.

And then there's another problem but it's not nearly as important. Yoh is playing for two sides, which means the chances of dying are increased exponentially (or is it proportionately? Yoh doesn't know- he _really _hated math) but the one that he's loyal to is Asami, even though the one he wishes-

* * *

Yoh doesn't talk a lot and he doesn't like math but that doesn't mean he's an idiot, it means he's selective and a little bit stubborn, and he understands what Asami means when he says, cigarette smoke curling from his mouth like a dangerous secret, "Do you think I'll let Fei Long off easy?"

Yoh knows that Fei Long might not be alive a month from now, he _gets _that but he still can't-

* * *

Yoh'd had a brother once. Doesn't really matter what his name was, how old he would be, what he was like, because he's dead. If there's one thing Yoh's learned in the Business, it's when you're dead, you're gone. Bye-bye. _Finito_. Curtains closed, and if it was a really good play people might talk about you for a while.

His brother's life wasn't very special and he'd been murdered because he'd bit off more than he could chew.

Yoh had been young and passionate and he'd gotten involved for revenge. Thought Asami would have him watch over this guy that ordered his brother's death until he got out of prison and then take him out personally.

It's pretty obvious things didn't work out the way he'd planned.

He feels kind of bad about that sometimes but his brother probably wouldn't have minded. He was a relaxed kind of guy, would've said, "Damn, you look like somebody just cut off your fuckin' puppy," or, "No, don't smile; we wouldn't want you to stretch a cheek muscle, princess."

Anyways, when you fail, you fail, and life's too short to be obsessed with the dead-and-never-coming-back.

So, a couple years ago, when he realized that he wasn't really interested in the whole revenge/murder thing, it'd been too late, he'd been too tangled up in this web Fei Long weaves around people, so soft and translucent that you don't even notice it until you try to get out.

Fei Long is…special. Everyone sees it (even Asami saw it except he didn't appreciate it). Fei Long is powerful. He's beautiful and strong and dangerous and sad and the people who meet him either want to run away forever or stay and save him from-

From what? Himself? His past? The world? There is nothing Fei Long can't save himself from and Yoh _knows_ this. He's known it for a long time but he _still_ can't let go, not even when Fei Long's most devoted subordinates are beating him with fists, broken pipes, and knives.

Yoh is spitting blood out of his mouth, metallic and bitter, with his hands tied behind his back and his body screaming in pain. He doesn't cry out but, in his mind, he's screaming, '_Goddammit, goddammit,' _over and over, again and again.

However, behind the pain and the fear and the completely useless curiosity to see his brother again, is the inexplicable desire to keep _living._ He doesn't really want to die (except for the part of him that whispers like a bitch, '_Maybe it's not so bad… This whole situation is balls anyways'_) especially not at the hands of some punk with a metal pipe.

He's a traitor and if he's going to die, he'd rather it be at the hands of the man he betrayed, not these assholes.

There are a lot of thing a person wants before they die. Yoh thinks his desires are ridiculously lame and he obviously has _no_ philosophical wonder about _anything_.

He wants a gun so that he can kill these dipshits, quickly and efficiently, to show them that murder is murder is Business and only stupid crimes involve passion.

He wants pizza. Preferably with four different kinds of meat, which is sort of weird because his favorite is just plain cheese.

And he wants to see Fei Long one last time, just to see him. He wants to say to him, "I-

* * *

Shooting at someone and confronting them whilst one has a concussion is a stupid thing to do, so he blames it on the concussion and when he almost faints from the dizziness, he scoffs at himself. Takaba needed help though, and, really, who else was going to give it to him?

When the dizziness and agony subsides, he looks from where he's collapsed to his knees up and sees that the Russian is gone.

Well, shit.

He spends the next half hour or so searching the unnecessarily large ship for everyone, ignoring the dull pounding in his skull and the mangled, bloody mess that is the rest of his body.

He's about to give up and take a (most likely) disastrous nap on one of the deck chairs when he hears a gunshot coming from the stern (or bow; he's never given half shit about boats).

He looks longingly at the patio chair before he sighs and sprints off, readying his gun once more.

Honestly, healing's for idiots and Yoh has been broken for years.

He can almost feel-

* * *

When Yoh gets there most of the action is already over (which is probably kind of good; he didn't actually know what he was going to do if there'd been a shootout) and Akihito and Asami are being ferried away.

Fei Long is watching them leave and, for a second, Yoh _aches_ to know what has happened, what has been said to make Fei Long allow those two safe passage out of here. He knows the Chinese man is in love with at least one of them and that's enough to make him want to punch something because (he _knows_, he's really _not_ stupid) that he doesn't compare to any of them.

Yoh is grim and serious and he's so very-

...

No. This is how it is: Yoh is grim, serious, gritty, and he's so very in love with Fei Long that he's pathetic and stupid and fucking useless with it.

Fei Long's hair flies around his elegant face, twisting with the wind, when he snatches the gun out of Yoh's proffered hand and aims it at Yoh's face with ten times the grace of a tiger.

Yoh wishes that he could touch the ebony locks before deciding that Fei Long, with his beautiful knife-sharp angles and furious sorrow, is too painful to look at and maybe the ocean wouldn't be as hard.

As it is, that doesn't help either because- and this is really retarded and kind of makes him want Fei Long to just hurry up with the whole shooting thing- because the sea reminds Yoh a lot of Fei Long, all pretty danger and horrible, horrible cold. So he looks back at the Chinese man and says, "This is the only way for one whose heart was stolen by you."

He kind of wants to hit himself for that one because it was awfully cliché.

(But that's the thing about clichés isn't it? They're overused because they're true and the world has been overpopulated for a long time.)

This is pain. His head hurts, his body hurts, and, worst of all, his heart hurts. Life is painful- it breaks you down and tears you up just because it can but, when Fei Long's narrow eyes widen with something like comprehension, Yoh thinks it's something beautiful too. (It's bullcrap because that makes his abused heart hurt even more and if Fei Long doesn't kill him soon, he may start crying and where's the fucking dignity in that?)

The Baishe leader's finger tightens on the trigger and-

* * *

Afterwards there're a lot of messy cover-ups (people need to be paid off, bodies need to be dumped…) that are stressful to everyone except Fei Long, who is as tranquil and serene as ever, and Yoh, who is busy making sure no one tries to snipe his ass for betraying the gang.

But (and Yoh is guiltily gleeful about this) the Baishe leader had told him, after all the drama had happened on the ship, nonchalantly with a careless wave of his hand, "You may stay, I suppose."

So here he is, telling the Boss about Mikhail Arbatrov and his new plan to stop buying heroin from the Baishe and, instead, get it directly from Vietnam through Shanghai. Fei Long looks increasingly uninterested, which is his default expression to anything the Russian idiot is involved with. It annoys Yoh, just a little bit, because this is _important_ and may mean he can finally put a bullet through that man's stupid blond head.

"Boss?" He asks, pausing in the middle of his report, irritation slipping into his voice like a tapeworm- unwanted and uncomfortable.

The Baishe leader sighs, slumping in his chair, and rests a cheek on the palm of his hand, "My apologies. You know how Arbatrov bores me."

Yoh nods, remaining respectfully silent as Fei Long lazily inspects him. Yoh's got instincts- he knows when to shut up around powerful people.

There's a long pause before Fei Long finally says, "I've been thinking about what you said on the ship."

Just like that Yoh's mild sense of relaxation is gone. He stiffens as dread and shame course through him like rivers. He doesn't want to remember how pitiful he looked and sounded on the ship and know he's _still_ that fucking useless man.

Fei Long smiles a little. It makes him pause in his inner panicking because it's something Yoh has never seen before, something soft and thoughtful, something that compels him to stay even though his instincts are telling him this whole situation isn't probably going to go straight to the dogs and shitted into hell.

Yoh's always been a bit of a cynic but Fei Long has always made him believe in hope.

"I wanted to say that I-"

* * *

A/N :) So you guys can use your wonderfully creative imaginations to come up with endings for all the cutoffs, right? Obviously I used a lot of artistic freedom when it came to Yoh's type of...word choice but I tried to retain the stern, reserved aura he exudes -waves hands dramatically-

Yoh/Fei is definitely under appreciated in this fandom D: Seriously peeps, write MORE of it! ;)

PLEASE REVIEW! Everything is welcome you guys ;) I'm a very open-minded person.


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